Cloud Gaming Is Launching In Southeast Asia, Using Blockchain To Empower Gamers

In this photograph taken on September 20, 2017, an eSports gamer plays League of Legends during training for the League of Legends World Championship at a boot camp in Shanghai.Once dismissed as the pursuit of teens and introverts, eSports is growing fast towards being a billion-dollar industry and has a huge fanbase, especially in Asia. / AFP PHOTO / CHANDAN KHANNA

Cloud gaming platforms, where gamers can play console-games using their laptops and PCs, will soon upgrade to adopt blockchain-powered decentralized systems, enabling peer-to-peer direct connection with member participation incentivized through a tokenization system.

Playkey has spent 4 years developing cloud gaming technology that allows gamers to play the latest video games on low-performance computers. That means that for a small fee you can play top-rated games anytime and anywhere, using any device- including your old, dusty laptop – as long as you have a fast internet connection.

Here’s how cloud gaming works: a game is launched on a server and streamed to the end user’s device. Cloud gaming is similar to streaming videos or music, but interactive. The remote server does all the heavy work while your computer only needs to receive streaming video and audio, and sends input commands when you press buttons on your keyboard or mouse to play the game.

“We believe there is no need to buy expensive or powerful computers, especially if you’re a gamer who only plays several hours a week,” says Egor Gurjev, Founder and CEO of Playkey.

The benefit is that you’ll no longer need gaming PCs or consoles with powerful graphics hardware because all the heavy lifting will be done “in the cloud.” By not having to purchase and maintain costly hardware and servers, cloud gaming will be “10x cheaper than current personal gaming hardware because of how it leverages “sharing economy principles,” says Gurjev. As a result of games becoming platform-independent the XBox or Playstation could eventually become obsolete as processing power is moved to the cloud.

While Playkey currently relies on cloud servers, the company claims that it will soon be the first cloud gaming platform worldwide to become decentralized. That’s a big deal. No one else in the world of cloud gaming is proposing decentralization.

Eventually, peer-to-peer direct connection with member participation will be available through a token system. The enhanced platform will unite cryptocurrency miners and gamers into one ecosystem. Miners are independent owners of powerful computers situated worldwide that act as cloud service providers.

The decentralization of gaming servers will become Playkey’s killer-feature. If the network isn’t limited by the geography of its centralized servers, you could be using Playkey’s service through your neighbour’s more powerful computer which will allow Playkey to scale without sacrificing speed. Gamers can select the best server to play their game on so their load speed is not slackened.

Your neighbour will also have an opportunity to make cash from the system. Miners have the opportunity to optimize their computational potential more efficiently and with less risk than cryptocurrency mining.

We expect that an open, decentralized cloud gaming market will provide both private and professional miners with the opportunity to generate 2-3 times more cash—at lower risk than crypto mining—while decreasing prices for gamers by 50%, which will allow more gamers to play a larger variety of games. This naturally expands Playkey’s user base and the number of available servers per location.

Finally, game developers and publishers will expand their client base. Playkey plans to expand their offerings beyond only connecting gamers to games to eventually include a platform that allows users to create, buy, and sell all game-related services. A completely serverless, peer-to-peer gaming ecosystem will be vastly more resilient and significantly cheaper to operate than current cloud gaming.

To allow gamers to access the gaming environment, Playkey plans on issuing their own token on November 1 — the PKT token — that will be used by gamers to redeem in exchange for playing games. PKT is a cryptocurrency that will be used to buy and sell cloud gaming subscriptions as well as other Playkey services and future products and could change the way we think about gaming entirely.

Playkey’s platform is used by 1.5 million gamers every month, using over one hundred Nvidia Grid powered servers based in four locations including London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Moscow. Playkey told Tech In Asia that “it’s planning a fifth location in Singapore that will cater to Asians.”

Playkey’s library boasts some of the most popular games from recent years, including PlayerUnknown’s Battleground, Overwatch, Dishonored 2, Friday 13, DOOM, GTA V, Fallout 4 and Dark Souls 3.

According to TechCrunch, Playkey isn’t stepping on the toes of publishers such as Valve, as they’re technically working as a collaborating partner for purchasing game keys, while also running a virtualization service to help run those games. That means that Playkey is paying game publishers to use their games.

There are two main competitors in the field of cloud gaming. LiquidSky recently released a 2.0 beta version of their app that puts any video game on any Android device and Geforce Now, who recently released an updatefor their popular SHIELD TV device that enables full Google Assistant support as well as the integration of Samsung SmartThings.